THE NE.WYORKER 17 tearing two years ago and spent six months in the wet wa5h at Auburn. Please rectify these mistakes and oblige." How you would have kicked had you got a note like that from me, signed "Respectfully." You'd won- der what had happened; what you had done to offend me that I wrote so formally instead of calling around to give you the usual friendly hell. Ah well, I see that all is over be- tween us. Oh, don't worry. I'll go quietly. Don't flatter yourself that I'll take it too hard, either, or that I'll get despondent and start doing my own washing. Not a bit of it. There are as good laundries in the you-know. And for that matter I was getting a little fed up with your idiosyncrasies (look that one up in the dictionary, you illiterate old Hand Laundry! ) . A MODE,RA TE,L Y HE,AR TRE,NDING LE TTE,R "We called for your laundry but found no one home. Please notify us ",,,hen to call again. "Respectfully yours, THE HAND LAUNDRY, - THIRD AVENUE..1.1 DEAR OLD FRIEND, E T me say at the beginning of this letter that I am perfectly calm. Yes, I am calm now, but you will never know about the night I spent after I came home and found your curt note stuck in the door. I thought morning would never come. Perhaps morning didn't come. Perhaps it will never come for me. Morning, as I have often said to you and you know it, is not so much a matter of sun and milkmen and schoolchildren and breakfast; morning should be in our hearts, and my heart is heavy, for I have lost a friend. You are that friend. "Re- spectfully yours" indeed! That was the most unkindest cut of all. No, don't protest that in that sharp note you did not intend to end our friendship. Ah, haven't I seen it com- ing? The way you've been sending the collars back lately. The week you didn't call for the laundry at all! Didn't even write, or telephone, and you know how I worry. .i\.h, how cruel a Hand Laundry can be! I should have known better than ever to trust you. Y au and your fair words and your everlasting promises to put more starch in my collars. Little you cared' whether there was more starch in my collars. T HE thing that humiliated me most was that you saw fit to creep up surreptitiously and leave the note in the door instead of coming to me frankly and telling me. How do I know who saw it? I was out all afternoon and evening. How do I know who called while I was away, and read it? Perhaps the whole thing is being bruited about town now by the gossips; you know how scandal spreads in a town like this, or a town like that. I can hear them, down in the back room at Jake's, cackling over the latest choice morsel of gossip: "Did you hear about Sullivan and the Hand Laundry of - Third Avenue? It's all off. They've phfft. Yes, they called for his laun- dry and he wasn't home. They left a note saying they were sick and tired of calling for his laundry and not finding him home and wouldn't stand it any longer. Called, him a this and that and asked him to return all the laundry they had given him by mis- take. Bill Weddum went up to see him and found the note in the door and read it. That's how I got my . f ." In ormatIon. Can't you just hear them raking me over the coals? Not raking you, of course. The Hand Laundry always gets off easy under our Victorian dou- ble standard of laundering. It's the customer that pays. By the time the story completes the rounds they'll have you beating me, I suppose. And the newspapers: "HAND LAUNDRY BREAKS WITH SULLIVAN. FORMER IRATE WHEN LAUNDRY IS CALLED FOR AND NOTED POLEMIC FOUND OUT. HAD BEEN ASSOCIATED FOR SEVERAL YEARS. REGARDED AS PER- FECTLY HAPPY." AH, it was cruel, cruel, to leave the I\.. note the way you did. You and I have not been on a note-exchanging basis, as far as I can see. I wouldn't send you a note saying: "In the laundry you returned to me on FrIday, I note that of the twelve shirts I sent you Monday, three are missing, three are torn and the re- maining six do not belong to me. Of the fifteen collars, six have not been laundered and four belong, I think, to Big Bill Edwards. The remaining five bear marks of thumb prints, which detectIves assure me coincide with those of your daughter, Clemen- tina, who was convicted of collar- ./ / I T'S the old story of ingratitude. I might have known when I started to make something of you that this would happen. Lord knows what made me ever expect that you would be different from any of the other hand laundries. Y au know full well what I've done for you since you came to New York. How about those Mondays when you didn't have enough laundry to use up a half pound of starch and you came to me with tears in your eyes and said, "F or God's sake, Frank, give us a little laundry" ? And I, softy that I am, would pile heaps of laundry on you. Things that didn't need laundering at all I'd send over to you, so that you'd have enough to make ends meet. I'd practically strip the house to get laundry for you.I made father change his shirt twice a day. I spilled gravy purposely on the table- cloth, until t e family gave up having gravy. I persuaded mother to have all the lambre- quins and the doilies from the whatnot in the parlor laundered; they hadn't been laun- dered since Baby.Mc- Kee was in the White -' House. I canvassed .,, - ' '1ôt: ..:::- m y friends to b aet bus- ..... iness for you. I got Mr. Budlong to send ... .......... ""." you tho s e shirts Mrs Budlong wrote t. lJ : U ,'. 1 'lJ : :.''-- iJ,. \ . : \ -,J( ., -- ... ::.:..".:.::::-:. ::::$: ............:-.-:;:;0:-....:::.;.;.;.. ....... ... . . _ ..."':...;::.._.... _ . <, ....... _......... ./ ? '. ,- :::.. I , Gç /! .:.:>>:"=">>=-:........::.. :::;:t..<t':;.- .. ...'. '... . . "I tell you, she's as pure as the driven snow, Bill." <e"' " ...... , 4.'sQGL:Q W.